performance of this feat.  Munro, who to his other qualities added those of a sturdy bon-vivant, together with Forrester, and a few who still girt in the lawyer as the prince of the small jest, discharged their witticisms upon the staggering condition of affairs; not forgetting in their assaults the disputatious civilian himself.  That worthy, we regret to add, though still unwilling to yield, and still striving to retort, had nevertheless suffered considerable loss of equilibrium.  His speeches were more than ever confused, and it was remarked that his eyes danced about hazily, with a most ineffectual expression.  He looked about, however, with a stupid gaze of self-satisfaction; but his laugh and language, forming a strange and most unseemly coalition, degenerated at last into a dolorous sniffle, indicating the rapid departure of the few mental and animal holdfasts which had lingered with him so long.  While thus reduced, his few surviving senses were at once called into acute activity by the appearance of a sooty little negro, who thrust into his hands a misshapen fold of dirty paper, which a near examination made out to take the form of a letter.

“Why, what the d——­l, d——­d sort of fist is this you’ve given me, you bird of blackness! where got you this vile scrawl?—­faugh! you’ve had it in your jaws, you raven, have you not?”

The terrified urchin retreated a few paces while answering the inquiry.

“No, mass lawyer—­de pedler—­da him gib um to me so.  I bring um straight as he gib um.”

“The pedler! why, where is he?—­what the devil can he have to write about?” was the universal exclamation.

“The pedler!” said the lawyer, and his sobriety grew strengthened at the thought of business; he called to the waiter and whispered in his ears—­

“Hark ye, cuffee; go bring out the pedler’s horse, saddle him with my saddle which lies in the gallery, bring him to the tree, and, look ye, make no noise about it, you scoundrel, as you value your ears.”

Cuffee was gone on his mission—­and the whole assembly aroused by the name of the pedler and the mysterious influence of the communication upon the lawyer, gathered, with inquiries of impatience, around him.  Finding him slow, they clamored for the contents of the epistle, and the route of the writer—­neither of which did he seem desirous to communicate.  His evasions and unwillingness were all in vain, and he was at length compelled to undertake the perusal of the scrawl; a task he would most gladly have avoided in their presence.  He was in doubt and fear.  What could the pedler have to communicate, on paper, which might not have been left over for their interview?  His mind was troubled, and, pushing the crowd away from immediately about him, he tore open the envelope and began the perusal—­proceeding with a measured gait, the result as well of the “damned cramp hand” as of the still foggy intellect and unsettled vision of the reader.  But as the characters and their